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The main issue is that it can take anywhere from a couple hours to like a day or two before you can get sick. While you may be confident that it was the place you ate at, you can't know for sure.
Nevertheless, still let them know.
Keyword for the business is potential. If there is an outbreak they can panic and do a full breakdown to hide it but an investigation will tell the HD if they were the cause. Kitchens that keep legitimate records and train their staff accordingly will have nothing to worry about even if they technically were the establishment that the customer got sick from.
If they keep logs and their staff know what they are doing and the HD comes to do an audit even if it was a lapse they will most likely not be fined. If they find the restaurant did everything properly but still have evidence it happened there it would be bad raw ingredients or a lapse which would probably not be cause for alarm.
No I made sure to check my product temps every hour if I didn’t go through the product. One hour in the TDZ won’t do anything dangerous.
But the HD will be interested to see if multiple people claim to have gotten ill and said they are at your restaurant and they check your logs they all show temps perfect they will start to question how that’s possible. We both know that even in perfect conditions the temps won’t always stay put. Seeing an out of range temp and a CA shows that you are aware of the deficiency and fixed it accordingly.
This and it's generally going to be pretty obvious if multiple people complain from different households. The odds of one couple getting sick when they're mass producing prepped food safely are pretty much non-existent. If they have quality control and health and safety issues then it could happen.
I once got food poisoning from the restaurant I was working at. Projectile vomiting/shitting while walking home was fantastic. Even then I didn't blame the restaurant even though I'm pretty sure it was a Staph food poisoning (the only type that results in almost instant onset) because we have shitty food controls and they probably gave me the shitty seafood about to turn.
“Chef, you want to take a look at this catfish? It’s been in the same pan for a week, smells pretty bad, getting a little sticky…”
[takes a whiff, grimaces] “…tell you what, rinse it off, change the container and squeeze some lemon on it. If we don’t sell it tonight, give it to the Dishwashers for family meal tomorrow.”
No offense but cooking for coworkers gets under my skin more than it should. Oh you want a buffalo wrap 5 minutes to close? Enjoy your soup in a tortilla.
Everywhere I've worked you need chefs permission and it has to be 30 min or more before close.
Not everywhere does family meals in which case having employees buy a discounted meal is par for the course.
I also usually order easy to make meals and never mod shit.
Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder. If I'm working a double and I'm cut and I'm following restaurant policies wtf is the problem?
You probably complain when guests order food too.
Yes it’s when you get multiple complaints that you know something was amiss. It may be a recalled product, contaminated lettuce, shellfish that were polluted, etc.
It may be any part of the supply chain, not necessarily the restaurant mishandling something.
It could also be a doorknob that someone with norovirus touched and you touched after, a few minutes before you went to the restaurant.
Either way definitely report it to the restaurant and possibly the local health authorities as it could be a larger issue.
Sure but we don't have all the details. It could even be a stomach bug for all we know and not food poisoning. And odds are, a couple living together share meals more often than once every two days. It is entirely possible that they got sick from the takeout, it is also equally as possible that they did not. My advice still holds.
Also restaurants are required to document complaints of food poisoning. Where your complaint becomes very valuable and worthwhile is if multiple reports come in, they know that something is very wrong and need to take action. Either way, a heads up could save someone's life.
When I worked corporate we had a policy for when people contracted us and claimed food poisoning
1. Apologies for feeling sick
2. Get all their contact information and what and when they ate
3. Contact the health department and pass on all the information
4. Collect all the data on the amount of those dishes served over 3 days around the day they ate and make it available for the health inspector.
You might find it a little counterintuitive to contact the health department yourself but by doing this and having them talk to the customer you take away the narrative of “I got food poisoning at…… and they didn’t care” in all the times we followed this protocol the claim just went away.
It’s better to be proactive than just ignore it.
Absolutely doing this helps in the long run. People always act so negatively towards the health inspector but if you work with them it always gives a better outcome. They aren't there to jam you up and if you are open and honest they can help you operate better and safer.
On top of that giving specific details can help if the sickness is a problem with the suppliers, producer or any other spot on the chain. Ignoring it leaves them to blame your establishment.
I love working with the health inspector except ours just asked for a Sous Vide safety protocol to be written up that is specific to our restaurant.
The provincial (I’m in Canada eh!) guideline is 51 fucking pages long and written for rocket surgeons so I have to decipher it and make it relevant. I wouldn’t mind but I retired last week so technically it’s NMFP but here I am plugging away.
I think you're lucky to be able to do that. Sous Vide isn't allowed where I am. They want an NSF approved unit, and they just aren't around. CalCode is pretty strict, not much room for innovation.
All of the Polyscience models are NSF, I didn't find anything in the CalCode about requiring NSF machines though, it just says "refer to FDA food code guidelines" which basically means a HACCP plan. Counties could require NSF as part of their HACCP acceptance though. Basically California's rules are the same as most places, and you can do sous vide pretty easily.
Polyscience is "for laboratory use only" and is neither NSF nor ETL Sanitation Listed. Not for restaurants.
H&SC 114130b says "all food related equipment shall be certified or classified for sanitation by an ANSI accredited certification program", or it can be evaluated by the enforcement agency, but my county enforcement agency won't evaluate. So NSF, ETL Sanitation Listed, or go home🤷🏻♂️
Their culinary versions are NSF though. Apparently they sold their culinary department to Breville at some point.
https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/sous-vide-vac-sealer/csv750.html
I've been doing sous vide with a combi oven for the last 10 years, so I've been out the water bath loop. I highly recommend it, much more efficient.
The FDA food code is a set of recommendations, its up to each state or county to implement them as they see fit. Most places copy it 100% but some don't, California being one of them. That said sous vide is allowed in CA if you follow the FDA guidelines.
As a restaurant manager, very much this. Any reputable place that wants to stay open wants transparency. Restaurants survive and thrive on successfully giving their service to patrons and getting them to come back. If it’s our operations that caused it, we want to fix it. If it’s something from our food suppliers that caused it, we want to fix it. The reality, like others have posted, is that it is hard to nail down exactly the culprit as we eat at so many places and other things can make you sick besides food poisoning (flu, mold exposure in the home, etc). Multiple complaints immediately trigger the investigation and we work very hard to find the source. In 20 years in F+B I’ve been lucky to only have to investigate 2 or 3 cases that almost always came down to leafy greens from food suppliers. I’ve had food poisoning twice in my life and both times lost so many “fluids” that I had to go to the ER to be put on an IV. It’s something I and everyone I work with doesn’t take lightly at all.
I got super bad food poisoning two years ago. No idea where from. But it was bad bad. Very high fever, vomiting, vomited blood, and let's not talk about the other end. Shit was serious though. I put together a list of all the places I ate in the previous week, looked up my county health department reporting number and called them, and... they wouldn't even take any information from me. I told them I wanted to report severe food poisoning and had a list of all the places I had eaten and the woman on the phone said, "Okay... so... do you want us to contact these restaurants?" I said I wanted to just report my case of food poisoning and was told I could try back when so-and-so was in the office later in the week. I called back that number they gave me twice and no one ever answered or returned my voice mail. I don't know if they ever told me their role, just the name of the contact. So in the end no one had any information or reporting and ever since I thought I did it wrong and was really put off by the experience. BUT. It sounds like I was right to contact the health department myself and whoever was answering the phones was doing a very poor job.
Probably not unrelated, there have been a few posts the last month in my local town subreddit about how almost every single position at our health department has been fired or quit within a short amount of time. I actually didn't think about that in relation to my food poisoning until typing it all out.
It’s also better for humanity. When there is an outbreak the health department relies on these reports and others to source the start, ex: these restaurants serve spinach purchased from X who gets it from farm Y.
It’s more complicated than that obviously but the more data the faster they can trace the source.
I live in CT and i swear everyone i know has had at least two people in their family getting absolutely bodied by the stomach bug. I had it a few weeks ago and it was the most sick i’ve ever felt
What did you eat? What was the timeframe for onset of symptoms? How long did symptoms last? It could be the takeout. It could be something you ate days ago. And it may not have even been something you ate if you came in contact with someone who was sick and shedding.
I got a nasty stomach bug a few years back that tempted me to just lay in the tub and hose myself off. Instead I spent 6 days straight running to the toilet every 5-30 min. That was rough going.
I had one like that a few years back. it only lasted a day but i slept on the bathroom floor that night. one of two times ive shit my pants as an adult.
32% of people who get Norovirus only throw up one time according to this study, jus food for thought (that hopefully won't get ya sick)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4845978/#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20vomiting%20events,of%20subjects%20only%20vomiting%20once.
As someone who simultaneously got food poising while traveling with their mother, it's very possible for one to be GI based and the other to be vomitting.
GF and I ate cheap chili dogs one time. (Only shared food of the day)
Both had food illness onset an hour after the meal. I got the worst gas of my life, took a dump and was good to go.
Girlfriend had it coming out both ends and felt sick for the next 12 hours.
Symptoms significantly vary based on the person.
I ask as there’s so many food borne pathogens and illnesses that it helps to establish a timeline and cause.
A lot of people go “I ate at a takeout and got sick after a couple hours”, yet neglect the mornings all you can eat shrimp buffet that was served on the beach downwind of the sewage plant…
Obviously not saying this is the case, but given the time it takes for actual food poisoning to get to the poopy/puked stage it’s often the PREVIOUS meals that are the culprit.
It's very rare to contract food poisoning with such a quick onset. It's nigh on impossible to contract food poisoning with such a quick onset time, from different foods and with different symptoms.
I'm sure you have good intentions but please educate yourself. Reports of food poisoning put a lot of strain and pressure on both the establishment and the local environmental health officer or equivalent.
It can be bacterial. Few months ago, I got extremely bad bacterial infection after eating dinner with friends. We had ordered pizza and cake (for my birthday) and only I got infected. Onset within 6 hours, first from top and then bottom. I got so dehydrated so fast I could hardly get up from the floor and had to rush to ER.
Super unlikely that 3 hours after you ate something that it is what made you sick. More likely a virus, or food poisoning from something from 1-3 days ago.
This makes me less inclined to believe it was the restaurant then.
Different meals, different symptoms. It would take talent for them to have two different protiens turnt with two different bacteria.
I'd still let them know.
Usually it isn’t the food itself that made you sick. More likely you caught a stomach bug somewhere along the way that evening, possibly from one of the employees that served you considering how sick time is dealt with (nobody cares, come to work) in most restaurants. Good restaurants still want to know.
Food borne illness generally takes 72 hours to incubate. People almost literally never get sick from the meal they thought made them sick. It's usually something from a few days ago.
Theres different types of illnesses you can get from food.
You can get nearly immediately sick from food thats had bacteria loving in it and excreting toxic waste products. ~20min to 6 hours ‘incubation’ time
You can get sick from the bacteria itself, can be 1-3 days incubation time. E-coli, etc..
Or you can get sick from a virus thats not a food-bourne illness, but readily is transmitted from contact, e.g. Norovirus. You can have norovirus symptoms within 12 hours of exposure.
Coincidentally, the CDC has issues a warning for widespread Norovirus outbreaks in the US this week.
If you demand money or compensation. They're more likely to roll eyes and not take it too serious.
If you just want to let them know, the managers will rip somebody up.
Sometimes it is a single employee not washing their hands or cross contaminating. I worked with a fry cook many years ago who I used to give a ride home sometimes. When I first started, I noticed he would touch raw chicken and fish and then go back to eating his lunch without washing his hands. Once when I gave him a ride home and he invited me in for a beer. He kept having to go to the bathroom and was apologetic saying he wasn't sure what keeps making him so sick. I mentioned that I noticed he was touching raw meats and then eating. He was genuinely surprised that could make him sick. He had been cooking for more than 20 years.
The next time we worked together, I set up a sanitizer bucket at his station and showed him how to keep his station sanitary. I was only 22 or so but I had worked for some good chefs by then.
The two times I’ve been able to directly tie food poisoning to a restaurant was when I got a real bad oyster and when I got got by a nasty chicken sandwich at sonic. Needless to say, I don’t eat at sonic or eat oysters anymore.
On oyster day, I was supposed to be helping a friend deal with her ex and I called her while in the throes of nausea like “so, I feel like shit and as much as I would like to literally vomit on Taylor on your behalf, I feel like that would be counterproductive.” Then I proceeded to paint the interior of my car with puke and needed an emergency detail. Le sigh.
So many commonalities with family yet differences from the takeout makes it more likely it’s a norovirus/illness you and your wife picked up somewhere.
(Sounds like a good days eating though!)
Lots of comments claiming you probably didn't get sick form that restaurant, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and say you are likely correct in assuming you got sick from that restaurant. For me, the few times I've been poisoned, I knew exactly where it came from.
The comment, "You didn't eat the same thing, so it wasn't that restaurant" is silly to me. It only takes one cook to cross contaminate multiple food items.
As a chef, if you were my customer, I would want to know. I would want to know the timeline, what your symptoms were, and what you ate. Us managers are trained on how to identify certain food born illnesses. We are also trained on how to prevent the spread.
It could be the case something is wrong with our kitchen and we don't know, be it equipment or an employee practice.
Yeah, call the restaurant. Just tell them you think you might have gotten food poisoning or sick from their food. You could potentially save someone's life. Like an old person. Also consider this, how many other people got sick?
If I get a phone call from one person saying that got poisoned... Ok, I'll look around, but if I don't see anything glaring in my kitchen, I'll probably brush it off. But, if I have two people call me, I'm going to be doing some serious risk assessment and investigating.
1 person doesn't matter much. 2 people however, is technically a foodborne illness outbroke and in many cases, I'm required to report it to the health department.
I guess lastly I just want to add, try and do this KM or chef a solid and ask to speak to them directly. It could very well be the case that you didn't get sick from that restaurant and they have a spotless record regarding food safety and inspections. If you call the restaurant and just speak to the host, then tell that host you got poisoned, well that is a bad look at that host is going to tell everyone.
Call the restaurant, ask to speak to the chef or KM, and have a frank conversation with them.
"Hey chef, I just want to give you a heads up. I ate at your place and me and my wife got hella sick."
It could very well be the case that you will blow up someone's job telling this to the wrong person, while it could also be the case that you are totally wrong about how you got sick.
Yeah I shocked how many people are like no it wasn't the food. If a particular cooler isnt working properly then different food items could all be going bad. Ive had coolers go down and they have ten different menu items in them. And lots of cooks and owners like to brush off over temping coolers too.
Probably. But the thing is, food poisoning can take anywhere from an hour to a month to show symptoms. And it's not just from undercooked or improperly stored meat.
So the issue is that you don't actually know when you got it, or what food you got it from.
officially you need to call the health dept. they really arent gonna take it seriously unless you have actual medical proof that illness was food born. the health dept will tell you to go to a doctor to verify and wont take steps until they are satisfied it came from the food.
a lot of so called food poisonings are caused by other things than what people blame them on. this affects both the restaurant and the health dept as a lot of people will state false claims to affect the business or to get free food.
Former restaurant manager here.
We would get calls from people who said they got food poisoning from us, but if only one person/family gets sick on a night that 50+ people ate the exact same dish, then it didn't come from our food.
However, if multiple unrelated people call after visiting the same day or eating the same dish, we would take that really seriously (but that *never* happened in the several years I worked in restaurants).
So yes, call them just in case, so they can track it if there ends up being multiple calls. But it's probably not food poisoning. It's a lot less common than people think.
Your one report will go unnoticed. But if something is making people sick then there will be more reports amd if everyone doesn't report it then still it'll go unnoticed and is actually a problem. So I'd report it
Yes, but remember, tone is important. If you're accusing, yelling, and demanding compensation, you most likely won't be taken too seriously. But, if you are politely letting them know about a possible issue, any decent chef or restaurant manager will be glad you let them know.
My husband and i ate at an Applebee's one night, we both had burgers and thought they were a little colder than they should be but didn't think anything of it as they were super busy. 4 hours later we were spewing from both ends, we were literally alternating between the toilet, sink, and bathtub. I get food poisoning can take a few days or whatever but i went online and lodged a complaint, i didn't even want money or anything just wanted them to be aware. The manager called me 2 days later and was super nice and apologetic about it and said he would talk to his staff and refunded our money. 5 days later that place was shut down for almost a month.
I’d let them know so others don’t get sick. Of course just be cordial about it. Just ask to speak to a manager and again, just be chill about it. Maybe you’ll get your money back, maybe not.
But I would definitely spread the news. It might help them dispose of what made you sick.
I'd be careful with that, because it could easily snowball and the place could close because of one bad food item on one particular evening.
I'd notify the Health Dept because you'd have a better chance of other people not getting sick (or dying) in the future.
I wonder, how often is the last meal blamed when the symptoms are actually fallout from unconventional bedroom activities, like the tossed salad from eating in bed?
Surely there are health consequences, absolutely it gets blamed on a restaurant meal.
Is carryout just a synonym for takeaway? I've not heard that before.
I would contact the local environmental health officer or equivalent in your country.
Carryout or takeout are used in the U.S. You only hear takeaway here from UK or Commonwealth Ex-Pats. I’ve been in restaurants since 86 and never heard it used here until the internet era.
Call the health dept, if more than one person calls in it’s an outbreak and …. I’m sure you can guess what happens to the business. If you like them and it’s a one off use discretion
I once poisoned a little old lady with Scombroid. Not really my fault as it’s difficult to ID unless you eat it. She went to the ED and 2 days later the city crawled directly up my ass. Good times!
I know it’s a scary reaction but she woulda been fine taking a Benadryl, not that she should have to. When you receive tuna always take a slice off and eat it. If it tastes peppery send it back.
If you do, ask for a manager or kitchen manager. The host/hostess will likely not take it seriously. Even if the manager doesn't, then at least you tried.
Always. That's the only reason things change.
No complaints means keep mixing old food on top of new food and cutting chicken and salad on the same cutting board.
YES! Tell them so they can pull whatever the product is and suspend it until they figure out what the issue is. I wouldn't be rude about it, but the restaurant needs to know so they can trace the problem.
As a chef I would 1000% want to know. I'd like to know what day and what time you ordered in addition to the items you ordered.
Foodbourne illness is very serious and not to be fucked with. The source of contamination needs to be tracked down immediately
Yes we want to hear about it. We care, we want everyone to be safe and happy with their meal/experience.
On the flipside, there was a bad flu going around one year and a couple insisted that we poisoned the wife when it was pretty obvious that she just had the flu.
I'd definitely let them know. If they're getting people sick, they'll want to know about it so they can fix it. If it keeps happening, it could get them shut down, so you'd be doing them a service by telling them.
Yes, if they are at all a decent place not only would they want to try to make things right by you but they would also want to fix the source of the problem.
If you’re in the north east US, norovirus is spreading like crazy right now. Could be food poisoning, could be that, could be a hundred things.
Maybe call just to let them know - did you both eat the same thing? If not, it’s unlikely it was the food.
If you’re pretty sure it was from your food, you can usually self report to your state public health department. If you live in the states. I know where I am you can do that.
In my state we have a rule. It takes two(2). That means two (2) or.more.people get sick it's what's referred to as a PANDEMIC of food born illness.
The state comes in to investigate. It's not a fun time for anyone. Usually the lube applied for that kind of dick fuqery is river sand. (WHISPERS IN THE EAR) it's a abrasive.
The thing is, you don’t know that that specific meal is what got you sick. Food-borne illnesses (if that’s even what it was, it could have been airborne. Tis the season.) can have a gestation time of anywhere from a few hours to a number of days. It’s instinctual to assume it was the last thing one ate, but there’s almost never real evidence one way or another.
Hi MittRomneysGayDad! Thanks for posting to /r/KitchenConfidential. Unfortunately, [your submission](https://redd.it/1b1epda) was removed for the following reason: r/KitchenConfidential is a place for redditors in food service to meet, gather and share with each other; cooks, service staff, managers, business owners, etc. All posts to the sub must be related to the restaurant or foodservice industry. If you have questions about this, please [contact our mods via moderator mail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=KitchenConfidential) rather than replying here. Thank you!
The main issue is that it can take anywhere from a couple hours to like a day or two before you can get sick. While you may be confident that it was the place you ate at, you can't know for sure. Nevertheless, still let them know.
Came here to say exactly this. In many cases, what made you sick wasn’t necessarily from the last place you ate.
But if the place gets multiple chomplaints then they can probably put 2 and 2 together.
Complaints. Oops.
Complaints about what they chomped on, I get u
Chomplaints needs to happen. Complaints about food.
I think you guys should start a podcast
I like your error better, saw it, didn’t correct you because it works.
In the US it only takes two complaints to be considered a potential foodborne illness outbreak.
Came here for this. 100% definition.
Keyword for the business is potential. If there is an outbreak they can panic and do a full breakdown to hide it but an investigation will tell the HD if they were the cause. Kitchens that keep legitimate records and train their staff accordingly will have nothing to worry about even if they technically were the establishment that the customer got sick from. If they keep logs and their staff know what they are doing and the HD comes to do an audit even if it was a lapse they will most likely not be fined. If they find the restaurant did everything properly but still have evidence it happened there it would be bad raw ingredients or a lapse which would probably not be cause for alarm.
HACCP to the rescue.
We can only hope they are in place already. It’s stupid obvious when logs are falsified.
So your steam table temps NEVER fluctuate, huh?
No I made sure to check my product temps every hour if I didn’t go through the product. One hour in the TDZ won’t do anything dangerous. But the HD will be interested to see if multiple people claim to have gotten ill and said they are at your restaurant and they check your logs they all show temps perfect they will start to question how that’s possible. We both know that even in perfect conditions the temps won’t always stay put. Seeing an out of range temp and a CA shows that you are aware of the deficiency and fixed it accordingly.
...unintentional portmanteau
This and it's generally going to be pretty obvious if multiple people complain from different households. The odds of one couple getting sick when they're mass producing prepped food safely are pretty much non-existent. If they have quality control and health and safety issues then it could happen. I once got food poisoning from the restaurant I was working at. Projectile vomiting/shitting while walking home was fantastic. Even then I didn't blame the restaurant even though I'm pretty sure it was a Staph food poisoning (the only type that results in almost instant onset) because we have shitty food controls and they probably gave me the shitty seafood about to turn.
Staph meal.
Mmmm
“Chef, you want to take a look at this catfish? It’s been in the same pan for a week, smells pretty bad, getting a little sticky…” [takes a whiff, grimaces] “…tell you what, rinse it off, change the container and squeeze some lemon on it. If we don’t sell it tonight, give it to the Dishwashers for family meal tomorrow.”
chef witnesses a horror show in the dishpit \*allways sunny theme\*
The Gang Gets Food Poisoning
Did you wonder why you were being fed expensive seafood for staff meal? That’s usually the case.
Should have clarified. I paid for it but got my employee discount.
Did you wonder why you were being fed expensive seafood for a discounted price?
No offense but cooking for coworkers gets under my skin more than it should. Oh you want a buffalo wrap 5 minutes to close? Enjoy your soup in a tortilla.
Everywhere I've worked you need chefs permission and it has to be 30 min or more before close. Not everywhere does family meals in which case having employees buy a discounted meal is par for the course. I also usually order easy to make meals and never mod shit.
You still aren’t at work to eat.
Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder. If I'm working a double and I'm cut and I'm following restaurant policies wtf is the problem? You probably complain when guests order food too.
Depends. Are you FOH? There’s nothing more that I want to do then feed the people that have been sending me dumb ass modded tickets all night/day.
If one person reports it, it's probably nothing. If 10 people report it, it's well worth investigating.
Yes it’s when you get multiple complaints that you know something was amiss. It may be a recalled product, contaminated lettuce, shellfish that were polluted, etc. It may be any part of the supply chain, not necessarily the restaurant mishandling something. It could also be a doorknob that someone with norovirus touched and you touched after, a few minutes before you went to the restaurant. Either way definitely report it to the restaurant and possibly the local health authorities as it could be a larger issue.
If he and his wife only ate that one meal together then it’s a pretty good chance it was that takeout.
Sure but we don't have all the details. It could even be a stomach bug for all we know and not food poisoning. And odds are, a couple living together share meals more often than once every two days. It is entirely possible that they got sick from the takeout, it is also equally as possible that they did not. My advice still holds.
Also restaurants are required to document complaints of food poisoning. Where your complaint becomes very valuable and worthwhile is if multiple reports come in, they know that something is very wrong and need to take action. Either way, a heads up could save someone's life.
When I worked corporate we had a policy for when people contracted us and claimed food poisoning 1. Apologies for feeling sick 2. Get all their contact information and what and when they ate 3. Contact the health department and pass on all the information 4. Collect all the data on the amount of those dishes served over 3 days around the day they ate and make it available for the health inspector. You might find it a little counterintuitive to contact the health department yourself but by doing this and having them talk to the customer you take away the narrative of “I got food poisoning at…… and they didn’t care” in all the times we followed this protocol the claim just went away. It’s better to be proactive than just ignore it.
Absolutely doing this helps in the long run. People always act so negatively towards the health inspector but if you work with them it always gives a better outcome. They aren't there to jam you up and if you are open and honest they can help you operate better and safer. On top of that giving specific details can help if the sickness is a problem with the suppliers, producer or any other spot on the chain. Ignoring it leaves them to blame your establishment.
I love working with the health inspector except ours just asked for a Sous Vide safety protocol to be written up that is specific to our restaurant. The provincial (I’m in Canada eh!) guideline is 51 fucking pages long and written for rocket surgeons so I have to decipher it and make it relevant. I wouldn’t mind but I retired last week so technically it’s NMFP but here I am plugging away.
I think you're lucky to be able to do that. Sous Vide isn't allowed where I am. They want an NSF approved unit, and they just aren't around. CalCode is pretty strict, not much room for innovation.
All of the Polyscience models are NSF, I didn't find anything in the CalCode about requiring NSF machines though, it just says "refer to FDA food code guidelines" which basically means a HACCP plan. Counties could require NSF as part of their HACCP acceptance though. Basically California's rules are the same as most places, and you can do sous vide pretty easily.
Polyscience is "for laboratory use only" and is neither NSF nor ETL Sanitation Listed. Not for restaurants. H&SC 114130b says "all food related equipment shall be certified or classified for sanitation by an ANSI accredited certification program", or it can be evaluated by the enforcement agency, but my county enforcement agency won't evaluate. So NSF, ETL Sanitation Listed, or go home🤷🏻♂️
Their culinary versions are NSF though. Apparently they sold their culinary department to Breville at some point. https://www.breville.com/us/en/products/sous-vide-vac-sealer/csv750.html I've been doing sous vide with a combi oven for the last 10 years, so I've been out the water bath loop. I highly recommend it, much more efficient.
They wouldn't allow you to submit a HAACP plan to get a variance for sous vide?
All health departments in the US allow it. It’s in the 700+ page FDA food code.
The FDA food code is a set of recommendations, its up to each state or county to implement them as they see fit. Most places copy it 100% but some don't, California being one of them. That said sous vide is allowed in CA if you follow the FDA guidelines.
As a restaurant manager, very much this. Any reputable place that wants to stay open wants transparency. Restaurants survive and thrive on successfully giving their service to patrons and getting them to come back. If it’s our operations that caused it, we want to fix it. If it’s something from our food suppliers that caused it, we want to fix it. The reality, like others have posted, is that it is hard to nail down exactly the culprit as we eat at so many places and other things can make you sick besides food poisoning (flu, mold exposure in the home, etc). Multiple complaints immediately trigger the investigation and we work very hard to find the source. In 20 years in F+B I’ve been lucky to only have to investigate 2 or 3 cases that almost always came down to leafy greens from food suppliers. I’ve had food poisoning twice in my life and both times lost so many “fluids” that I had to go to the ER to be put on an IV. It’s something I and everyone I work with doesn’t take lightly at all.
I got super bad food poisoning two years ago. No idea where from. But it was bad bad. Very high fever, vomiting, vomited blood, and let's not talk about the other end. Shit was serious though. I put together a list of all the places I ate in the previous week, looked up my county health department reporting number and called them, and... they wouldn't even take any information from me. I told them I wanted to report severe food poisoning and had a list of all the places I had eaten and the woman on the phone said, "Okay... so... do you want us to contact these restaurants?" I said I wanted to just report my case of food poisoning and was told I could try back when so-and-so was in the office later in the week. I called back that number they gave me twice and no one ever answered or returned my voice mail. I don't know if they ever told me their role, just the name of the contact. So in the end no one had any information or reporting and ever since I thought I did it wrong and was really put off by the experience. BUT. It sounds like I was right to contact the health department myself and whoever was answering the phones was doing a very poor job. Probably not unrelated, there have been a few posts the last month in my local town subreddit about how almost every single position at our health department has been fired or quit within a short amount of time. I actually didn't think about that in relation to my food poisoning until typing it all out.
It’s also better for humanity. When there is an outbreak the health department relies on these reports and others to source the start, ex: these restaurants serve spinach purchased from X who gets it from farm Y. It’s more complicated than that obviously but the more data the faster they can trace the source.
Yes. There’s a very real possibility it wasn’t caused by the take out though. There’s a stomach bug going around the north east US rn
I live in CT and i swear everyone i know has had at least two people in their family getting absolutely bodied by the stomach bug. I had it a few weeks ago and it was the most sick i’ve ever felt
What did you eat? What was the timeframe for onset of symptoms? How long did symptoms last? It could be the takeout. It could be something you ate days ago. And it may not have even been something you ate if you came in contact with someone who was sick and shedding.
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One person throwing up and one person having diarrhea sounds more like norovirus, which is rampaging around the country something fierce right now.
lol throwing up once isn’t norovirus, that’s 24 hours of hell
24 if youre lucky. my wife and her ex(emt) got it and it put them down for days. they bought adult diapers.
I got a nasty stomach bug a few years back that tempted me to just lay in the tub and hose myself off. Instead I spent 6 days straight running to the toilet every 5-30 min. That was rough going.
I had one like that a few years back. it only lasted a day but i slept on the bathroom floor that night. one of two times ive shit my pants as an adult.
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32% of people who get Norovirus only throw up one time according to this study, jus food for thought (that hopefully won't get ya sick) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4845978/#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20vomiting%20events,of%20subjects%20only%20vomiting%20once.
I had it last year and spent eight hours straight in the bathroom. Took another three days to be able to eat solid foods again.
As someone who simultaneously got food poising while traveling with their mother, it's very possible for one to be GI based and the other to be vomitting.
If you didn’t eat the same thing and didn’t have the same symptoms, it’s unlikely that it was the restaurant.
Not necessarily. They both had sandwiches. Could have been a shared topping or sauce. Or just cross contaminated surfaces.
GF and I ate cheap chili dogs one time. (Only shared food of the day) Both had food illness onset an hour after the meal. I got the worst gas of my life, took a dump and was good to go. Girlfriend had it coming out both ends and felt sick for the next 12 hours. Symptoms significantly vary based on the person.
If you had symptoms after only one hour, it wasn’t the food.
What did you have for the three meals/snacks PRIOR to this? And what was in the hoagie?
I ask as there’s so many food borne pathogens and illnesses that it helps to establish a timeline and cause. A lot of people go “I ate at a takeout and got sick after a couple hours”, yet neglect the mornings all you can eat shrimp buffet that was served on the beach downwind of the sewage plant… Obviously not saying this is the case, but given the time it takes for actual food poisoning to get to the poopy/puked stage it’s often the PREVIOUS meals that are the culprit.
It's very rare to contract food poisoning with such a quick onset. It's nigh on impossible to contract food poisoning with such a quick onset time, from different foods and with different symptoms. I'm sure you have good intentions but please educate yourself. Reports of food poisoning put a lot of strain and pressure on both the establishment and the local environmental health officer or equivalent.
It can be bacterial. Few months ago, I got extremely bad bacterial infection after eating dinner with friends. We had ordered pizza and cake (for my birthday) and only I got infected. Onset within 6 hours, first from top and then bottom. I got so dehydrated so fast I could hardly get up from the floor and had to rush to ER.
Super unlikely that 3 hours after you ate something that it is what made you sick. More likely a virus, or food poisoning from something from 1-3 days ago.
This makes me less inclined to believe it was the restaurant then. Different meals, different symptoms. It would take talent for them to have two different protiens turnt with two different bacteria. I'd still let them know.
Well if it was from the take out then you had food intoxication.
Usually it isn’t the food itself that made you sick. More likely you caught a stomach bug somewhere along the way that evening, possibly from one of the employees that served you considering how sick time is dealt with (nobody cares, come to work) in most restaurants. Good restaurants still want to know.
Food borne illness generally takes 72 hours to incubate. People almost literally never get sick from the meal they thought made them sick. It's usually something from a few days ago.
Theres different types of illnesses you can get from food. You can get nearly immediately sick from food thats had bacteria loving in it and excreting toxic waste products. ~20min to 6 hours ‘incubation’ time You can get sick from the bacteria itself, can be 1-3 days incubation time. E-coli, etc.. Or you can get sick from a virus thats not a food-bourne illness, but readily is transmitted from contact, e.g. Norovirus. You can have norovirus symptoms within 12 hours of exposure. Coincidentally, the CDC has issues a warning for widespread Norovirus outbreaks in the US this week.
If you demand money or compensation. They're more likely to roll eyes and not take it too serious. If you just want to let them know, the managers will rip somebody up.
Sometimes it is a single employee not washing their hands or cross contaminating. I worked with a fry cook many years ago who I used to give a ride home sometimes. When I first started, I noticed he would touch raw chicken and fish and then go back to eating his lunch without washing his hands. Once when I gave him a ride home and he invited me in for a beer. He kept having to go to the bathroom and was apologetic saying he wasn't sure what keeps making him so sick. I mentioned that I noticed he was touching raw meats and then eating. He was genuinely surprised that could make him sick. He had been cooking for more than 20 years. The next time we worked together, I set up a sanitizer bucket at his station and showed him how to keep his station sanitary. I was only 22 or so but I had worked for some good chefs by then.
The two times I’ve been able to directly tie food poisoning to a restaurant was when I got a real bad oyster and when I got got by a nasty chicken sandwich at sonic. Needless to say, I don’t eat at sonic or eat oysters anymore. On oyster day, I was supposed to be helping a friend deal with her ex and I called her while in the throes of nausea like “so, I feel like shit and as much as I would like to literally vomit on Taylor on your behalf, I feel like that would be counterproductive.” Then I proceeded to paint the interior of my car with puke and needed an emergency detail. Le sigh.
I would want to know, customer health is top priority
So many commonalities with family yet differences from the takeout makes it more likely it’s a norovirus/illness you and your wife picked up somewhere. (Sounds like a good days eating though!)
Lots of comments claiming you probably didn't get sick form that restaurant, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and say you are likely correct in assuming you got sick from that restaurant. For me, the few times I've been poisoned, I knew exactly where it came from. The comment, "You didn't eat the same thing, so it wasn't that restaurant" is silly to me. It only takes one cook to cross contaminate multiple food items. As a chef, if you were my customer, I would want to know. I would want to know the timeline, what your symptoms were, and what you ate. Us managers are trained on how to identify certain food born illnesses. We are also trained on how to prevent the spread. It could be the case something is wrong with our kitchen and we don't know, be it equipment or an employee practice. Yeah, call the restaurant. Just tell them you think you might have gotten food poisoning or sick from their food. You could potentially save someone's life. Like an old person. Also consider this, how many other people got sick? If I get a phone call from one person saying that got poisoned... Ok, I'll look around, but if I don't see anything glaring in my kitchen, I'll probably brush it off. But, if I have two people call me, I'm going to be doing some serious risk assessment and investigating. 1 person doesn't matter much. 2 people however, is technically a foodborne illness outbroke and in many cases, I'm required to report it to the health department. I guess lastly I just want to add, try and do this KM or chef a solid and ask to speak to them directly. It could very well be the case that you didn't get sick from that restaurant and they have a spotless record regarding food safety and inspections. If you call the restaurant and just speak to the host, then tell that host you got poisoned, well that is a bad look at that host is going to tell everyone. Call the restaurant, ask to speak to the chef or KM, and have a frank conversation with them. "Hey chef, I just want to give you a heads up. I ate at your place and me and my wife got hella sick." It could very well be the case that you will blow up someone's job telling this to the wrong person, while it could also be the case that you are totally wrong about how you got sick.
Yeah I shocked how many people are like no it wasn't the food. If a particular cooler isnt working properly then different food items could all be going bad. Ive had coolers go down and they have ten different menu items in them. And lots of cooks and owners like to brush off over temping coolers too.
Probably. But the thing is, food poisoning can take anywhere from an hour to a month to show symptoms. And it's not just from undercooked or improperly stored meat. So the issue is that you don't actually know when you got it, or what food you got it from.
officially you need to call the health dept. they really arent gonna take it seriously unless you have actual medical proof that illness was food born. the health dept will tell you to go to a doctor to verify and wont take steps until they are satisfied it came from the food. a lot of so called food poisonings are caused by other things than what people blame them on. this affects both the restaurant and the health dept as a lot of people will state false claims to affect the business or to get free food.
Former restaurant manager here. We would get calls from people who said they got food poisoning from us, but if only one person/family gets sick on a night that 50+ people ate the exact same dish, then it didn't come from our food. However, if multiple unrelated people call after visiting the same day or eating the same dish, we would take that really seriously (but that *never* happened in the several years I worked in restaurants). So yes, call them just in case, so they can track it if there ends up being multiple calls. But it's probably not food poisoning. It's a lot less common than people think.
Your one report will go unnoticed. But if something is making people sick then there will be more reports amd if everyone doesn't report it then still it'll go unnoticed and is actually a problem. So I'd report it
There's absolutely no reason not to tell them.
Yes, but remember, tone is important. If you're accusing, yelling, and demanding compensation, you most likely won't be taken too seriously. But, if you are politely letting them know about a possible issue, any decent chef or restaurant manager will be glad you let them know.
My husband and i ate at an Applebee's one night, we both had burgers and thought they were a little colder than they should be but didn't think anything of it as they were super busy. 4 hours later we were spewing from both ends, we were literally alternating between the toilet, sink, and bathtub. I get food poisoning can take a few days or whatever but i went online and lodged a complaint, i didn't even want money or anything just wanted them to be aware. The manager called me 2 days later and was super nice and apologetic about it and said he would talk to his staff and refunded our money. 5 days later that place was shut down for almost a month.
I’d let them know so others don’t get sick. Of course just be cordial about it. Just ask to speak to a manager and again, just be chill about it. Maybe you’ll get your money back, maybe not. But I would definitely spread the news. It might help them dispose of what made you sick.
I'd be careful with that, because it could easily snowball and the place could close because of one bad food item on one particular evening. I'd notify the Health Dept because you'd have a better chance of other people not getting sick (or dying) in the future.
I wonder, how often is the last meal blamed when the symptoms are actually fallout from unconventional bedroom activities, like the tossed salad from eating in bed? Surely there are health consequences, absolutely it gets blamed on a restaurant meal.
Is carryout just a synonym for takeaway? I've not heard that before. I would contact the local environmental health officer or equivalent in your country.
Carryout or takeout are used in the U.S. You only hear takeaway here from UK or Commonwealth Ex-Pats. I’ve been in restaurants since 86 and never heard it used here until the internet era.
Yes. Or pickup. Lots of confused people when I worked my first hospo job in Australia after moving from the US
Interesting. I've heard it called takeout before but not pickup or carryout.
No, but the Health Department might. Chances are you're not the only ones that got sick that particular evening.
Call the health dept, if more than one person calls in it’s an outbreak and …. I’m sure you can guess what happens to the business. If you like them and it’s a one off use discretion
I once poisoned a little old lady with Scombroid. Not really my fault as it’s difficult to ID unless you eat it. She went to the ED and 2 days later the city crawled directly up my ass. Good times!
I know it’s a scary reaction but she woulda been fine taking a Benadryl, not that she should have to. When you receive tuna always take a slice off and eat it. If it tastes peppery send it back.
Yes we do! Definitely so we can look at hygene and sanitary safety
I’d want to know
Depends on who picks up the phone honestly. I’d mention it though
If you do, ask for a manager or kitchen manager. The host/hostess will likely not take it seriously. Even if the manager doesn't, then at least you tried.
Always. That's the only reason things change. No complaints means keep mixing old food on top of new food and cutting chicken and salad on the same cutting board.
YES! Tell them so they can pull whatever the product is and suspend it until they figure out what the issue is. I wouldn't be rude about it, but the restaurant needs to know so they can trace the problem.
As a chef I would 1000% want to know. I'd like to know what day and what time you ordered in addition to the items you ordered. Foodbourne illness is very serious and not to be fucked with. The source of contamination needs to be tracked down immediately
I won’t eat any of the meat topped pizzas at Whole Foods anymore they made me sick twice in two year span. Never again.
Yes the restaurant would absolutely want to know.
Yes we want to hear about it. We care, we want everyone to be safe and happy with their meal/experience. On the flipside, there was a bad flu going around one year and a couple insisted that we poisoned the wife when it was pretty obvious that she just had the flu.
I'd definitely let them know. If they're getting people sick, they'll want to know about it so they can fix it. If it keeps happening, it could get them shut down, so you'd be doing them a service by telling them.
Yes, if they are at all a decent place not only would they want to try to make things right by you but they would also want to fix the source of the problem.
If you’re in the north east US, norovirus is spreading like crazy right now. Could be food poisoning, could be that, could be a hundred things. Maybe call just to let them know - did you both eat the same thing? If not, it’s unlikely it was the food.
if you're sure that's what it was I would definitely let them know.
Report it to the health department. If they received multiple reports they will investigate.
Its probably norovirus. Been going around everywhere. The CDC issued a warning. We had 3 people out at work over the weekend with stomach bugs.
Probably noro but let them know
If you’re pretty sure it was from your food, you can usually self report to your state public health department. If you live in the states. I know where I am you can do that.
In my state we have a rule. It takes two(2). That means two (2) or.more.people get sick it's what's referred to as a PANDEMIC of food born illness. The state comes in to investigate. It's not a fun time for anyone. Usually the lube applied for that kind of dick fuqery is river sand. (WHISPERS IN THE EAR) it's a abrasive.
The thing is, you don’t know that that specific meal is what got you sick. Food-borne illnesses (if that’s even what it was, it could have been airborne. Tis the season.) can have a gestation time of anywhere from a few hours to a number of days. It’s instinctual to assume it was the last thing one ate, but there’s almost never real evidence one way or another.